Fancy Meeting You Here
by the ramblin rose
Summary: Caryl, AU. Short. Just because the world was asleep, it didn't mean that everyone was.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: This is just a short little fic. Just a few chapters, but you know that my science isn't always exact for that. It's just meant to be cute and fluffy and was inspired by an anon request on Tumblr.**

 **I own nothing from the Walking Dead.**

 **I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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Daryl couldn't say that he'd ever been an amazing sleeper. As far back as he could remember, actually, he'd always had a hard time falling asleep. Of course, in his younger years he always found something to blame it on. His parents fought a lot. He worried about things that were out of the control of a child. When he got older? He didn't sleep because he partied too hard and denied himself sleep to follow his older brother around with the goal of being cool in his brother's eyes. As he got even older? He swapped out sleep for extra hours of work and more money in his pockets.

All his life, there had always been _something_ to blame for his inability to shut down and sleep when night came.

Except now he was really out of excuses.

He was fifty three years old. He was good with money. He'd more than saved up enough to live comfortably on if he wanted to retire. He didn't retire, of course, because he liked his work—but he no longer had the need to work late if he didn't want to. He didn't have much to worry about in life. He had most everything that he needed. He couldn't blame the threat of problems for his lack of sleep. He lived alone in his home, too. So there was no one there to keep him awake. He couldn't blame Merle for too much noise or something equally inconsiderate.

He'd come to accept that he simply didn't sleep much anymore.

Most nights, Daryl felt the need to simply get out of his home. He usually spent his evenings there, eating a t.v. dinner and watching whatever happened to be on when he turned on his television set, but then when it was time to sleep he felt the need to simply escape his own walls. If he wasn't tired, there was no reason to make himself more miserable by lying in bed and thinking about all the hours of sleep he was missing.

As a result of his nighttime haunting of the little town, he'd discovered the few places where someone could actually go at a late hour to entertain themselves. There weren't many options, though, because the thing about sleepy little towns was that they actually slept—even when Daryl didn't.

The diner in town was the only establishment that was open twenty-four hours. The town was a rural stop on a main highway in Georgia. The diner sat just a few miles off the highway and, as a result, it caught a lot of traffic from people who were just travelling through. From what Daryl saw, it probably did the best business of the day after the residents of the town had gone to bed.

Daryl was a regular there.

Almost every night he sat in the same seat at the same back-corner table. Sometimes he ate, other times he didn't. They didn't bother him, one way or another, because he was such a regular customer that he more than made up the money for the nights when he only wanted something to drink.

Tonight was one of the nights where he wasn't feeling particularly hungry. He put in an order for fries—something to pick at—but mostly he just ate one every now and again when he even remembered they were there. He watched the people as they came in and out—truckers and families with sleeping children were the most common. Some of them stayed long enough to eat. Others got their food to go. Others, still, stopped just for the restroom or to ask directions.

Daryl had seen all kinds.

He noticed the woman when she came into the diner because she seemed a little out of place. She came in, shaking off her umbrella because of the storm that raged on outside, and then she looked around the diner like she'd never been there before. She didn't have the "look," though of someone who'd been travelling. Her clothes weren't right for it. She didn't have the half-asleep or dazed look that was common. Rather than going to the register or the bar and asking for directions—or going straight to the bathroom as was pretty common of travelers—she ran her fingers through her short gray hair, wiped some water off that was beading on her rain jacket, and then she searched out a seat.

She sat at the table almost across from Daryl. He'd chosen the side of his table that faced her. Whether meaning to or not, she'd chosen the side of hers that faced him. When the waitress came, she ordered coffee—nothing else—and she thanked Janet with a smile.

Daryl thanked Janet, too, when she came to refresh his sweet tea, and then he returned to watching the woman.

She looked like she didn't know what to do with herself. She looked around, patted her legs under the table, and picked at the sugar packets. She rearranged the things on her table and she sat straight up and flopped back in her chair. She wasn't half-dead like most of the people that stumbled through there at this hour. If anything, she had _too much_ energy.

Daryl snorted to himself when Janet brought the coffee and put it down in front of the woman. She looked at him. He hadn't actually meant for her to hear his amusement, but he was caught now. He might as well roll with the punches.

"Hope that's decaf," he said, sitting up to lean with his elbows on the table like they might actually have a conversation across the space that divided them.

"It doesn't matter if it is," the woman said. "Won't make a difference."

Fair enough, she knew her caffeine tolerance better than Daryl did.

"Headed somewhere?" Daryl asked.

The woman looked surprised to hear him speak again. She looked at him, pointed to herself, and hummed.

"You're talking to me?" She asked.

Daryl chuckled and gestured toward the empty space in front of him.

"Well, my buddy here ain't good for conversation," he said. "Headed somewhere?"

The woman looked around and then she started to speak to him. She got half a word out and stopped. She sighed and then she got up. She gathered up her things and Daryl assumed that maybe he'd offended her. Some people, after all, were pretty easy to offend. She surprised him, though. Rather than leaving or relocating to the other side of the diner, the woman gathered her stuff up and moved to stand next to Daryl's table.

"May I?" She asked.

He raised his eyebrows at her in surprise and gave her the gesture of "go ahead" for joining him. She sat and spent a moment getting herself comfortable once more.

"Guess that answers that question," Daryl said. "You was headed to my table." Across the table from him, the woman looked at him like he was an idiot. He'd accept it. She was very attractive—and even that expression didn't take away from it. "A joke," Daryl offered.

"I just thought that, if we're going to talk, it would make more sense to talk this way," the woman said. "Unless you mind?"

Daryl shook his head.

"Don't mind," he said. "I don't got any plans."

"Carol McAlister," the woman said, offering her hand to shake across the table.

"Daryl Dixon," Daryl said, shaking her hand in response. He cleared his throat. "So—where you headed?"

"I was headed to the park," Carol said. "Until it started pouring rain."

"So you're from around here?" Daryl asked.

Carol nodded.

"I've lived here for at least—seven years? Eight? I moved here right after I divorced my husband," Carol said.

"Sorry," Daryl offered.

"Don't be," Carol responded. "It was one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life. Both getting rid of my husband and moving here. You're from here?"

"Born and raised," Daryl said. "That's a lie. I was born two towns over—hospital's there. But I'm from here. Spent my whole life here. The park? At two in the morning?"

Carol smiled to herself and went about fixing the coffee that she hadn't prepared to her liking yet.

"The one over off Oak? The little one? I like to walk there at night. It's not crowded. There's never anyone there but me. The bugs aren't as bad as you would think they'd be. On nice nights? I like to clear my head out there," Carol said.

"Rain ran you in tonight," Daryl said. Carol nodded.

"Unfortunately," Carol said. She tasted her coffee and must have found it to her liking. She sat back in her chair, visibly relaxed, and continued to drink from the mug in her hand.

"That coffee'll keep you up the rest of the night if it's leaded," Daryl said. "They make it strong here."

"I'm up most of the night anyway," Carol said. "I haven't slept a full night since January. August before that."

"What happened in January? And—August?" Daryl asked, immediately wondering if he was really at liberty to ask such things of the woman. She looked at him and was clearly asking herself, too, if he was at liberty to pose such a question.

"My daughter went back to school," Carol said. "Up-state. I don't sleep well, when she's gone, but I'd never tell her that."

Daryl hummed to himself and nodded at Carol.

"Been longer for me," he admitted. "I can't even tell you the last time that I slept a whole night. I come here a good bit. Always open. Got a couple of other places I hit. Just get out the house."

"Away from the silence," Carol said.

Daryl hummed.

"But you just said you like the park. It's pretty quiet, right? Nobody else but you because everybody else is home asleep?" Daryl asked.

"It's a different _kind_ of quiet," Carol said. "It's a quiet that feels like..." She broke off and shrugged. "It's a quiet that feels like it should be quiet. It feels like the quiet that belongs there. At home—it just feels out of place."

Daryl swallowed.

Sometimes he understood that feeling a little too perfectly. He liked quiet as much as the next person. In fact, too much noise or too many people talking at once and he could feel like he was about to lose his mind. He could feel like he was on the verge of screaming. But there were other times when the quiet just seemed to be too much. It seemed suffocating.

"Quiet can be overrated," Daryl said. "Sometimes."

Carol hummed and nodded her agreement as she drank from her coffee cup again.

And quiet _could_ be overrated. So much so, in fact, that Daryl found that the conversation shared with a virtual stranger, that night, was one of the best things he'd done in a while. He actually _had fun_ simply sitting across a table with her. They chatted about things around town—the construction that was being done outside the courthouse to make the town "prettier," the fact that half the town was up in arms about the fact that another half wanted to paint all the fire hydrants green—and then when they were out of conversation they sat and took turns making up stories about the people that dashed into the diner for one thing or another—always looking completely pissed off about the rain—before they dashed back out again.

By the time that Daryl paid his tab and left a generous tip for Janet on the table, and Carol did the same, they'd put in at least two hours of just not-being-quiet together.

And Daryl, honestly, was sad to see it end.

But sleep or not, they both had lives that continued when the sun came up. They both had jobs. They both had things to do. They both had to get home and do all the domestic things they did to fill the hours that they didn't spend sleeping, and they both had to lie down and hope that maybe, just maybe, there was a short nap that would keep them going when the morning demanded it.

So, in the rain, Daryl walked Carol to her car and she laughed at him for his insistence that he didn't need to share her umbrella because he wasn't going to melt away in the water. And then he went and climbed into his truck to drive himself home in the opposite direction from that which she'd taken.

He didn't ask her if he might expect to see her again at the diner, another night sometime, but he realized that he really hoped he did.


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: Here we go, the second of...I'm really not sure. I'm going to say there's four or five more, judging from my outlines, but let's be flexible on that number and say give or take one or two.**

 **At any rate, I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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Daryl got to the diner at just after one in the morning. He'd given sleep a pretty decent chance. He'd "gone to bed" at around midnight and he'd stayed there for at least forty minutes. Finally, realizing that this night was going to be like any other where sleep was something elusive that only other people enjoyed, he'd gotten out of bed and decided to go about his normal routine.

Over the years, Daryl had tried everything there was to try to solve his sleeping problems. He'd done the whole counting sheep thing—though he couldn't figure out how that had ever worked for anyone. He'd tried mediation tapes, but they really just ended up irritating him so that he was not only awake, but his blood pressure was also elevated. He'd even gone to his doctor and gotten the prescription pills that were supposed to knock him out except those had resulted in some delightful side effects they referred to as "sleep-eating" where Daryl had gotten out of bed in the middle of the night and proceeded to eat an entire sleeve of Saltine crackers before he woke up. And, more than likely, it was only extreme thirst that had even roused him then. He'd put the pills in the back of the medicine cabinet and he hadn't taken that gamble again.

At this point, he wasn't really fighting it anymore. He caught a nap, every now and again and, more often than not, when he was watching television, and those naps somehow got him through everything else he had to do. Lying in bed and hoping for sleep was the most counterproductive thing he could do—it only irritated him and kept him awake—so he no longer pushed himself to try that. He'd lie down, but as soon as he was pretty sure he wasn't going to fall asleep, he was back on his feet again.

When he pulled up at the diner there were several cars parked there. He scanned them, but none of them belonged to Carol. He half-expected to see her there, or maybe it was just hope instead of expectation, but if she was coming then she wasn't there yet.

Daryl held the door for a woman that was coming from her car—wearing pajamas by the looks of it—and was carrying a toddler that was sleeping on her shoulder. She thanked him and he nodded his head at her in response. Inside, he checked to see who was working and threw a hand up in the direction of Nikki. She was twenty two. She'd been working there for three months and she hated the night shift. She didn't seem to mind Daryl, though, and she would sometimes entertain him with stupid stories about her crazy ass friends when there weren't many customers.

Daryl slid into his familiar spot and moved everything out of his way, clearing the space in front of him. If he needed a fork or a napkin he could reach for it, but he didn't like feeling crowded by it. He didn't like it laying there with some kind of expectation placed on him.

"You eating tonight, Daryl?" Nikki asked, coming over to stand next to his table.

"Cheeseburger," Daryl said. "Just the burger."

"Ketchup, pickles, no mayo?" Nikki asked.

Daryl nodded his head.

"Double them pickles," he said.

"Exciting night tonight?" Nikki teased. Daryl chuckled and resisted rolling his eyes at her. Nikki flirted with everyone. She thought it got her extra tips. Maybe it did with some people. Daryl tipped all the waitresses the same, though. Twenty five percent was his standard tip. He'd worked too many shit jobs in his life to stiff someone else just trying to bust their ass to survive.

"Sweet tea?" Daryl asked.

"You got it," Nikki declared.

She walked off to get his burger—probably already cooked and laying in a pile of burgers in the back—and Daryl looked around. Normally he'd take in everyone that was there. He'd try to figure out their story just from what they were wearing and how damn tired they looked. Tonight, though, he felt pretty distracted. He kept leaning up in his chair to look out the window. Every time he saw the bright glare from outside that announced the arrival of another vehicle, he tried to see if it was Carol.

He tried to imagine what he'd say when she walked in the door. He wondered if she'd come directly to his table and sit or if she'd play coy and sit a couple of tables away until he invited her over. He wondered if she ever ate at night or if she was one of those women who didn't eat after five or else they'd become something like a gremlin—or at least that's what they acted like would happen.

But she didn't come.

And even when he'd eaten his burger in big bites that helped him polish the thing off in what was probably not a respectable amount of time spent on a meal, she still hadn't come.

Daryl got a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach and he couldn't really blame the food for it.

It was a nice night, though. The storms from the night before had passed and they'd left the air a little cooler. A little less suffocating. And Carol did seem like a woman with a lot of extra energy to burn off—maybe sitting in a diner just wasn't her thing.

Daryl waved Nikki down and asked for his check. She looked confused—of course she would—because she was used to him spending hours there. He wasn't usually an eat-and-run patron. Tonight, though, that's just what he was going to be. Feeling, for whatever reason like he had to apologize to her, and like he needed to make sure she knew it wasn't something she'd done, Daryl offered her the explanation that he had something he had to do—despite the ridiculous hour—and he paid his tab before he ducked out of the diner and headed for his truck.

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It took him fifteen minutes to find her. The moon was fairly bright, and the park wasn't too poorly lit, but it still took him fifteen minutes to find her.

She was walking on the little walking track. She was strolling along at a slow speed. She was out there for peace of mind, not for exercise. Daryl caught up with her and called her name just before he fell in step beside her.

Even in the dim light, he could see her smile.

"Daryl? What are you doing here?" Carol asked.

He didn't try to hide his smile.

"Nice night," he said. "I just come out to get some fresh air. Didn't realize this was the park you come to."

Carol laughed to herself. She didn't believe him. Not for one single second. And she wasn't trying to hide it.

"Well," she said, drawing the word out, "then fancy meeting you here."

Daryl chuckled.

"Yeah," he responded. "How about that? Long as we're both here, though, don't suppose you'd mind having a walking partner?"

Carol hummed.

"You know," she said, "I wouldn't mind that at all. Did you sleep last night? After you left?"

"You mean this morning," Daryl teased. "Yesterday morning—whatever. Yeah. I got about two hours. You?"

"Three and a half," Carol said. She raised her arms like she was crossing a finish line and Daryl laughed.

"You're a damn champion," Daryl said. "Cured!"

"Cured," Carol echoed back, but now with the same enthusiasm. "How long have you had insomnia?"

"Don't know that I've ever really thought of it as _having_ anything," Daryl responded. "Really, I just think—that I can't sleep. Well—I take that back. I can sleep just fine. It's the getting there that usually turns out to be the problem."

"Same," Carol said. "Once I fall asleep? I sleep like a baby. I hardly even wake up for anything."

"Except to go at the bathroom," Daryl said. Carol laughed and hummed in agreement. "Remember that once upon a time I didn't even do that. I'd just wake up dying in the morning." Carol didn't respond and Daryl thought about it a moment. When _did_ it start? When was it that he'd simply given up sleeping like he assumed that normal people slept? He sucked his teeth. "I don't remember when I stopped sleeping normal," Daryl said. "Maybe I never did."

"Four years ago," Carol said definitively. "Four years ago my daughter left for college. Don't get me wrong, I'm so _proud_ of her. But—I got so used to having her there. For a long time? Sophia was my whole _world_. When I couldn't sleep? Even when she wasn't a little girl anymore, I'd go up to her room and I'd just—check in. I'd make sure that she was sleeping. That she was all right. She didn't need anything. She's wonderfully independent. She doesn't need anything. She's just fine wherever she's at. Here or there, it doesn't bother Sophia. I wanted her to be like that. I wanted her to be comfortable enough with herself that—it just didn't matter. As it turns out, though, _I'm_ not that independent."

"You said you weren't married," Daryl said. Carol hummed at him in question. "You said you weren't married. Means you gotta be somewhat independent."

"I didn't mean like that," Carol said. "I guess I am. I am. I just meant—that I don't sleep as well when Sophia's away. When she comes home? On her breaks? I don't have quite as much trouble sleeping."

"But you still have some?" Daryl asked. "Trouble?"

"I guess I do," Carol said. "Habit?"

"Or it ain't your daughter," Daryl said. "Maybe you're like me. Maybe you just don't sleep. But—I know what'cha mean. About the house being different? My older brother and I lived together since I was born. Merle. He moved out about a year ago. Took a job in Atlanta working at a mill. Good pay and good hours. He loves the hell out of it. Been good for him. I thought he drove me crazy, but when he was gone..."

Daryl broke off. He didn't really know how to explain it. He'd spent most of his life thinking that the only thing that could make his life any better would be to somehow get Merle out of it. Now Merle had moved somewhere else, only came back every once in a while, and Daryl was still coming to terms with the fact that, apparently, all those years together had left him feeling like something was just out of place when Merle wasn't there.

"You miss him," Carol said, her voice coming out soft—almost as a coo. Daryl felt his cheeks burn a little in response to the sound. He laughed to himself.

"I wouldn't say that," he said.

"You do! You miss him," Carol said. "It's fine. I think it's good. It means—you loved him. You cared for him. You liked having him around."

Daryl laughed.

"All right," he said. "But now you're just making him sound like a dog or some kinda animal."

"Did you ever have one?" Carol asked.

"One what?" Daryl asked.

"A dog," Carol said. "Did you ever have one?"

Daryl hummed in the negative.

"Had a yard dog one time," Daryl said. "Can't say I really had it as much as I threw scraps at it. Open the door and throw out the leftovers kind of thing. Dog didn't mind me for shit. Was just some stray that hung around—until one day he just didn't never show back up. Did you?"

"No," Carol responded. "When I was younger I didn't have the time or the energy to take care of one. My husband wouldn't have wanted one around anyhow. I've been thinking about getting one, though. They say that they help. With the quiet?" She laughed to herself. "I'm just a little afraid that I'd become _that_ woman, you know? The one that—dresses my dog in outfits and talks to him like he's a person. You know the whole—Mr. Belvidere and I are staying in tonight. He just loves Jeopardy and he won't be happy if we miss it."

Daryl laughed hard enough that he had to stop a moment. Carol stopped her forward progress as well.

"Hell, I'd probably be just as bad at this point," Daryl said. "I've caught myself talking to the people on television like they could understand me. I guess it'd be worse if—if I knew that the dog could understand some of what I was saying. I'd wanna teach it tricks, though, that it probably wouldn't learn."

He started walking again, setting the pace at the leisurely stroll once more, and Carol caught him and matched his steps.

"You mean like fetch?" She asked. "Roll over and...what's that other thing? Play dead?"

"Like wash the towels," Daryl said. "Make dinner. Something good."

Carol laughed at him.

"If you get a dog that can do all that? Let me know. I want to find its littermate," Carol responded. "I usually forget that I'm there alone and that Sophia isn't coming home for dinner. I make enough for three people, eat enough for one, and then I'm stuck with leftovers for two days."

"I can do you one better," Daryl said. "Half of what I eat comes out of plastic trays with plastic wrap on 'em."

"T.V. dinners?" Carol asked.

Daryl hummed.

"Just like the warden made it. I've never been in prison, but I've sure eat like it," he said. Carol thought that was funny. She "poor Daryled" him until the next curve in the track.

Daryl didn't mind when Carol laughed at him. Sometimes it made him uncomfortable when other people laughed at him. Even if he'd done something that he knew should make them laugh, he always wondered if they were just putting it on to try to make him feel like he was funny. He wondered if, in the back of their minds, they were thinking he was the dullest person they'd ever met. Other times, he had a strange sense of paranoia that came over him and he thought that, maybe, they really were laughing at him, but they weren't laughing for the reason that he thought. Maybe they were simply laughing at him in general.

But when Carol laughed? It didn't feel that way. Her laugh sounded real and warm. Instead of making Daryl's stomach ache, it made him feel like he'd done something good—he'd earned that laugh. He'd made her feel good, for even a moment, and that made him feel pretty good.

That night was the best exercise, outside of work, that Daryl had gotten in a while. By the time he walked Carol back to her car, his legs burned from the effort and his stomach and sides did too. His face ached more than he could ever recall it aching before.

And he actually felt kind of _tired_. He felt like everything around him was a little distant. A little fuzzy. He felt a little like he was drunk when he hadn't drank a thing that day.

And all of it was because of the dainty little woman that he met in a diner and shared a moonlit walk with around the track at the park. If he hated to see her go the night before, he was even sorrier that night when he watched her headlights disappear from sight and headed home to try to steal those elusive "couple good hours" of sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: Here we are, another chapter here.**

 **I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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Daryl put down the tailgate of his truck and hopped up on it as soon as he arrived at the park. He lit a cigarette and sat leisurely smoking it while he waited. There was nobody else there. Of course there wasn't. Most people were home, in bed, asleep. Even driving there he'd taken the time to notice how many houses he passed that actually had lights on. There were very few of them, and the ones that did have lights on usually only had one burning in some corner room—maybe even the room of some kid who had way too much homework or hadn't learned the value of sleep, when it was available, just yet.

When he saw the glow of headlights that told him that someone was turning into the winding drive that led to the park, he started smiling to himself without even thinking about it. He knew who it was—it had to be her.

Carol pulled her car up beside Daryl's truck. She opened the car door and fooled around with things inside the car before she acknowledge his presence. He hopped down off the tailgate and closed it, aware of how loud the sound was in the silence that surrounded them, and then he walked around to stand close to her. She looked at him, then, and smiled.

"Fancy meeting you here," she teased. "Come here often?"

"Not as often as you'd think," Daryl said, leaning on her car. "But—I'm thinkin' of makin' it a regular thing."

She smiled and dove back into her car. When she came out, she offered him an apparently heavy plastic bag. He took it and cocked an eyebrow at her in question.

"Food," Carol said. "You don't have enough home-cooked meals to eat and, clearly, I have too many. There's enough there for about three days. Or one really exciting day if you're hungry."

Daryl chuckled and looked in the bag. He couldn't tell much about what was in there other than it was assorted Tupperware bowls of varying shapes and sizes. He tried to offer it back to her.

"I appreciate the food," he said. "But I don't wanna take your bowls and all."

Carol pushed it back at him.

"Teach your domestic dog to wash dishes," Carol said. "Then you can bring them back to me. I have a feeling that this won't be the last time we run into each other."

"I hope not," Daryl said, still looking into the bag. He swallowed. He meant it. He hoped this wasn't the last time they ran into each other—but he didn't want to look at her and see if, just maybe, her face didn't say the same thing. He bought himself some time by quickly turning back to his own vehicle and unlocking the door. She finished whatever she had to do and he heard the sound of her car door closing and the locks engaging—even if there was nobody out here to bother a thing. Daryl put the food in his truck, thanked her for it once more, and only then finally looked at her. If what he'd said had struck her at all, she'd erased the expression from her face. There was no trace of it. Daryl sucked in a breath. "Head for the track?" He asked. "I wore my good walking shoes tonight."

She smiled and nodded.

As they started for the entrance to the park, Carol held her arm out, elbow bent, like she expected Daryl to link arms with her—like they might play a friendly game of Red Rover with some invisible soul that was out here. He hesitated a moment, but finally accepted her offer and slipped his arm through hers. She smiled at the gesture and moved closer to him so that they didn't look as much like Red Rover was their intention and, instead, they were simply walking arm in arm.

"You have a good day?" Daryl asked.

Carol hummed.

"A day," she said. "Pretty much like any other, I guess. I went to work and—well, I work at an office. A law office. And the computer that I have is a desktop that I think they bought back when it they were first introduced and..."

She stopped.

"What's wrong?" Daryl asked, leading her onto the track to start their looping walk.

"Do you really want to hear this?" Carol asked.

Daryl shrugged.

"Why not?" He asked.

"It's pretty boring, really," Carol said.

"You haven't heard about the exciting life I lead," Daryl said. He laughed to himself just at the thought that anyone—even in jest—could apply the adjective "exciting" to anything about him.

"Really?" Carol asked, still deciding if he was joking or not.

"Oh yeah," Daryl responded. "Crime fighting. Rescuing damsels in distress and kittens in trees. Restoring world order—all in a day's work." Carol pulled back on his arm because she'd stopped walking. He stopped, too, and looked at her. In the dim light of the park, she was staring at him like she wasn't really sure whether or not to believe him. He realized that, just like he didn't know she worked in a law office until that moment, she didn't really know anything about him. He laughed quietly and shook his head. "Work in a shop," he said. "Used to do all the grunt work. Now I'm a manager. And if I get lucky? I get a _chance_ to get on the floor and do some of the grunt work." She started walking again and Daryl picked up his steps too so as to not risk breaking the link between them. Should it get broken, he wasn't sure that he could get it back quite as smoothly as she'd introduced it. He didn't want to take the risk. "Tell me about your computer," he pressed.

"Not too much to tell," Carol admitted. "Basically, I think it's run its course. Wouldn't turn on this morning. It was just making this awful humming noise like..." She stopped talking and illustrated for Daryl the terrible noise that had told her exactly how her day was going to go. It echoed around them and Daryl laughed.

"Sounds like a pterodactyl dying," he teased.

She hummed in the affirmative.

"It's not so bad that it died," Carol said. "I mean it was really slow and it would freeze up when I was working. I'd been trying to talk the partners into getting a new one for a while. The worst part is that it took about a week's worth of work to the grave with it. I had everything in paper copies—old faithful—but it means I spent the whole day doing work that I've already done."

"Shit like that happens to me all the time, too," Daryl agreed. "I spend twice as long these days doing stuff on the computer than I ever spent doing it by hand. Waste more time doing it the easy way than I can even add up. But—that's what it's all about. Whatever's the easiest. Don't know who it's the easiest for, though."

Carol hummed and they fell into a lull where all that Daryl could hear was the sound of their shoes on the pavement and the occasional piece of loose gravel from the asphalt crunching or bouncing away from them.

"Your brother, is he your only one?" Carol asked.

"Merle?" Daryl answered. "Yeah, he's the only one. Only family I've got now. I mean—I guess there's family somewhere. There's gotta be cousins and all, but I don't know any of them."

"Your family wasn't close?" Carol asked.

Daryl laughed to himself.

"No," he said. "No—close wouldn't be the word I'd use. Mama died when I was a kid. My old man—he lived until I was about twenty. Then it was just me and Merle. How about you? Your daughter, Sophia?"

Carol hummed.

"You remembered," she said, a little amusement in her voice. "It's been Sophia and I for a while now. She's my only child. My parents passed away a few years ago. Daddy first. Mama right after him. I had a sister, but she died young. I lost touch with a lot of my family after I got married. I've got some friends, though, that are really like family."

"Nice to have that," Daryl said. "Sometimes—they're the ones that's better than the family you got."

"Do you have some? Friends like that?" Carol asked.

"Got a couple buddies," Daryl said. "Mostly I've worked with 'em since I can remember. I guess you could say they're like family. Still wouldn't make for a real great reunion crowd, if you catch my drift. You'd just know someone was going to jail 'fore the night was out."

Carol laughed. She leaned into him. She pulled his arm. It was an odd sort of movement, but it made Daryl shiver. She looked at him when the shiver ran through him and he played it off by staring ahead of them like they had to pay a great deal of attention to the track on which they walked.

"Have _you_ ever been to jail?" Carol asked.

Daryl laughed.

"Now you're really getting in there, ain't'cha?" He teased. "Right to the heart of it." She hummed at him. "I got hauled in a couple of times," Daryl said. "I won't lie about it. When I was younger, though. It's been at least twenty years since I sat my ass on the wrong side of them bars."

"What for?" Carol asked.

"Usually? Drunk and Disorderly," Daryl said. He laughed and Carol nudged him. She hummed at him to ask what the laughter was for. "It's just—this old man I used to work with? Called me Double D all the damn time. Daryl Dixon—Double D. Except, once? I got hauled in and it was the second time for Drunk and Disorderly. He told me he was changing my name. Weren't changing the name so much—still Double D—but changing what it stood for because, apparently, that was my favorite crime to commit." Carol laughed quietly at that. "What about you?" Daryl asked. "Ever done hard time?" He couldn't imagine that she had, but it only seemed fair to ask her to confess her life sins if he was confessing his.

"I actually _have_ been to jail," Carol said. "Once. And I'm a little ashamed to say that it wasn't that long ago. Some friends and I went out drinking. Reliving the glory days, I guess—glory days that I didn't really have when I was young. We got a little over the top. A little too drunk. They ended up putting us in a cell, but in the end they didn't charge us. Just a slap on the wrist."

Daryl laughed to himself.

"That's the difference between being you—Carol McAlister the law firm secretary—and being me—Daryl Dixon the Ding Doctor," Daryl said. "I spend the night, you get off with a warning."

Carol laughed.

"Ding Doctor? That's pretty good, _Double D_ ," she teased. Daryl felt his cheeks burn hot at the sound of genuine amusement in her voice. "Are you disappointed that I went to jail? Or are you more disappointed that I didn't get a record?"

Daryl laughed.

"Neither one," he said. "A record ain't a good thing, but it's good to let your hair down sometimes—right? Live a little before they pick out'cha hole. Maybe some of us actually just did a little too much living."

"You think that you've done too much living?" Carol asked.

Daryl hummed and shrugged, bobbing her along with the movement of his shoulder.

"There's some stuff I wish I hadn't done," he admitted. "Too late to change it now, though."

"I think there's _stuff_ that we all wish we hadn't done," Carol said. "But—I kind've believe in the whole idea that it's that stuff that gets you where you are. Like—maybe if I hadn't gone out with them that night? And I hadn't gone to jail? Maybe I wouldn't be here tonight, walking around the pond, with you."

"How you figure that?" Daryl asked.

Carol hummed while she thought about it and Daryl let her. He wasn't in any hurry to finish the conversation or to get to the next topic. He wasn't in any hurry for anything. He was just enjoying the relaxing feeling that was wrapped around him at the moment.

"If I hadn't gotten taken in that night?" Carol offered, finally starting to respond. "Then I wouldn't have realized that it can be easy to make a mistake. I used to think that people didn't end up in jail—didn't end up with a record—unless they were just _bad people_. They were just causing problems for everyone else. So—if I hadn't ended up there, maybe I wouldn't have kept walking with you after you said you had."

Daryl's stomach twisted. He didn't want to imagine that something as stupid as some dumb ass mistake he made in the past would make Carol simply refuse to even walk with him—but he understood that's sometimes how it works.

"Then I'm glad you got hauled in," Daryl offered.

"Me too," Carol said. "In fact—I might go disrupt the peace a little more. You know? Just—so we have more to talk about."

Daryl laughed when she laughed at her own joke.

"Smartass," he said. She only laughed harder at the name calling. Quickly he picked up where they left off, not wanting the conversation to die for too long. He was feeling tired, and surely she was too, but he wasn't ready, yet, to call it a night. "If you decided you wanted to do that? What crime would you commit?"

"Oooh," she responded. "Anything? Prison or jail?"

Daryl laughed.

"Hey, we're playin' for high imaginary stakes here," he said. "Do your best."

And while he waited for her to think of something, walking along at the same slow pace they'd set for the rest of the night, Daryl thought about his answer too. After all, he couldn't leave her hanging when she inevitably turned it around on him.

The night, even though it had crossed already into the wee hours of morning, was still young. And so were they.


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: Here we go, another chapter here. I'm so glad to see that some of you are actually getting into this. We don't have that much more to go here, but I'm glad that it's been an enjoyable read for some of you!**

 **I hope you enjoy the chapter! Let me know what you think!**

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For three weeks they met every night at the park. Every night Daryl got there a little earlier than Carol did. He smoked a cigarette on the tailgate of his truck and he waited for her. She'd arrive and he'd offer her back dishes that she'd given him food in and, more often than not, she'd exchange them out for some dish or another that she'd recently prepared. The first part of their walk was almost always spent with Daryl praising Carol's cooking while she tried to brush the compliments off as him simply being nice. Even if he never returned any food, after all, she could choose to believe that he simply threw it out to keep from hurting her feelings, even if that wasn't the case at all.

As soon as the topic of food was done, they'd exchange conversation about their days. Carol worked in a law office and one of her best friends was a partner there. Though Carol couldn't tell him any of the details of _why_ people passed through the office, or _who_ they were, she would often tell him stories about how they _acted_ —particularly if they were just a little over-the-top about something. To make things even, Daryl went through most of his days at work and tried to collect stories for her. Sometimes customers gave him a lot to work with. Other times he was left just telling her bits and pieces of the struggles that he had with some of his part-time employees that seldom lasted as employees for very long.

Food and work out of the way, Daryl would ask about Sophia. He'd never met the girl, but he'd heard enough about her now that he could almost imagine her. He had an image of her in his mind, even if he didn't know if it was even close to being correct. He'd hear about what she was doing away from school, what her plans for the future were, and when she thought she'd come home next. Then he'd tell Carol any new information that he might have on Merle, which usually included updates on his job and the new woman that he was seeing and seemed kind of serious about.

And from there? The conversation could go anywhere. They covered any random topic that struck either of them. Throughout the day, Daryl would jot down notes on pieces of paper as he went about his normal routine. If there was anything he thought of as a possible topic, he'd write it down. Then, when he pulled up at the park, and just before he switched off his engine, he'd flick on the overhead light and commit some of them to memory—just in case they came up lacking something to discuss.

It was Friday night and Carol was late. She was very late. Fridays were usually their best days. Neither of them felt pressured to try and catch those "couple good hours" of sleep because they had all the time they wanted on Saturday to nap. They took their time on Fridays. They lingered longer than they did any other night. But Carol wasn't here yet—and she hadn't said anything about not coming the night before.

Daryl sat, swinging his legs and waiting, but he'd never been through two cigarettes in the time between his arrival and her arrival. He reached in his pocket, burrowed out his cell phone, and checked the time.

Carol was very late. It was almost two already.

He didn't have her number. In all that time, they'd never thought to exchange phone numbers. The assumption was always that they'd see each other, the very next night, and so anything they had to say to each other could very well wait.

But Daryl was worried.

Of course the safe bet would be to assume that Carol had simply _fallen asleep_. Somehow she'd overcome her inability to fall asleep at any hour before three and she'd drifted off. That's why she wasn't here.

But that wasn't where Daryl's mind went. Immediately he worried that something had happened to her. He would have no way of knowing that she was fine, or that she wasn't. He knew about Sophia, but he had no reason to think that Sophia knew about him. And, regardless, Carol didn't have his number. He also knew that Carol lived alone. Sophia wasn't in town and she wasn't due in for another month. If something happened to her at home, there might not be a soul that knew about it until morning. After all, they'd have no reason to suspect that she was just as active after midnight as most people were during the day.

He struggled with himself for a few moments and then finally he hopped down off his tailgate. Behind the seat in his truck, he had an old phone book. The one that he had in there at the moment was about three years old. He kept one with him all the time because it was easy to look up addresses for people when he needed them. Some people teased him, calling it a relic, but he preferred flipping through the pages to find things rather than trying to figure out how the hell to find them on his phone.

In the light from the truck's overhead, Daryl flipped through the pages and prayed that—in the land before everybody simply had a cell-phone—Carol could be counted on to have had a landline. He slid his finger down the page once he had the "M" section and hoped that, of the McAlisters listed there, Carol was the "C." McAlister that hadn't bothered with a full name. He jotted the address down on a receipt that he found and then he got in the truck.

He wasn't sure what he'd say when he got there, but he hoped he figured it out on the way.

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Daryl drove by Carol's house three times, turning around each time in nearby driveways to make the trip back down the road. He knew he had the right house because her car was parked out front, but he wasn't sure what to do. Now that he was there, and he could see that half her lights were on, he wondered if there really could be something wrong or if she'd just decided not to come back to the park anymore.

Either way, showing up at her door at half past two in the morning had all the chance of earning him a true shotgun welcome.

Getting shot by someone he considered a friend, and especially because he was worried about them, wasn't how he wanted to spend the night. He'd tried calling, but the number in the book was no longer in service. Like most of them, she'd done away with the landline.

He'd come this far. Shotgun welcome or not, Daryl wasn't turning back until he knew that she was at least all right. If she told him that she had just decided not to come to the park, that would be OK. If she told him that she'd given up on walking with him, for whatever reason, at least he'd know. Maybe she'd be irritated at his impromptu and middle of the night arrival. But if she'd fallen? Gotten hurt or had some kind of heart attack or something equally as horrible? She'd probably be damned happy to see his ass.

So he pulled in the driveway, parked the truck, and took a moment to steady his nerves before he got out. He walked up to the door and hesitated a moment. Did he knock? Did he ring the doorbell? Either way, he was going to have to do one or the other if he wasn't counting on her to simply _feel_ that he was outside. He opened the glass door, rested it against his shoulder, and knocked at the wooden door. Then, he waited.

He heard Carol fumbling around behind the door. He didn't doubt she was peering at him through the peephole, so he directed his face at the little dot and hoped he didn't look half as nervous as he felt. He heard her slide the chain out of the way and he heard the click that sounded the disengaging of the lock. She opened the door, but just a crack.

"Daryl?" She asked. "What are you doing here?"

Daryl swallowed.

"You didn't come to the park," Daryl said, realizing how stupid it sounded as soon as it came out of his mouth. "I didn't have a number to call. Looked you up in the phone book, but your number doesn't work anymore. Just—I'm not stayin'. I just—wanted to make sure you were all right. Nothing had happened." Carol opened the door a little further and Daryl tried to pretend that he wasn't surprised to see her wearing a short cotton nightgown—a very different outfit than the full coverage clothing that she wore to the park. It made sense for the time of night it was, but it didn't mean he was prepared for it. "I'm sorry," he said quickly. "I shouldn't have come and I realize now it was—dumb. But I just..."

He didn't finish. She finished it for him, instead.

"You were worried about me?" Carol asked. He couldn't quite read her tone of voice. He expected her to be mad, but it wasn't anger that he heard there. Maybe it was amusement, but it sounded softer than that.

"Just—you come every night," Daryl said. He shrugged. "I live alone. Hell—I've told Merle before that I can't retire. If I don't come into work, someone's gonna come lookin' for my ass. But if I retired? I could die at the house and be there for weeks before anyone would even care to see what happened. Probably—not 'til a bill was due or Merle tried to call and couldn't get me and I didn't call him back."

Daryl stopped himself. He realized he was rambling. But his nerves were a little more shot than he expected. He'd worried about how Carol might react. As desperately as he wanted to check on her, he didn't want to make her think he was crazy either. He didn't want to do anything that would make her think she didn't want to come around at all. And now? He'd lost control of his mouth like he was a kid again and he was yammering on her porch about dying and rotting in his own home.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Carol sighed and leaned against the wooden door.

"Don't be sorry," she said. "Really. It's just...my friend Michonne? The one I work with? She came over. She was having some _husband_ problems. I mean, she's fine. They're fine. She just stayed late. Yelling on the phone to him with me as an audience. She left about an hour ago and I just thought it was too late. I thought, well, I honestly thought you would've gone home. I would've called you, but I didn't have your number. I didn't even think to look it up."

"Wouldn't have done no good, anyway," Daryl said. "That's the thing about these cell phones. You can't find 'em nowhere if the person doesn't give you the number."

Carol straightened up.

"You wanna come in?" She asked.

Daryl's stomach tightened. He shook his head at her.

"It weren't my intention to come here and mess up your whole night," Daryl said. "I just—really? I just wanted to make sure you were OK. I should've figured that something came up."

"Come in," Carol repeated, her tone of voice changing as her facial expression transitioned from the exasperated expression she'd worn seconds before to a soft hint of a smile. "You're not interrupting anything. I was just about to make some popcorn, actually. You like popcorn?"

Daryl chuckled.

"I can't say that I've ever had it at this hour," he said.

Carol hummed and raised her eyebrows at him.

"Good," she said. "Not the bag kind, either. I make mine on the stove."

Daryl caught himself smiling at her overall appearance and attitude. He was used to seeing her relaxed and he was used to seeing her smile—she smiled a lot—but there was something a little different in her expression right now. It was a little more natural. It was a little more relaxed, even, than he'd seen before.

"I like popcorn," he offered. "You can—tell me what happened with your friend?"

Carol refreshed her smile and nodded, stepping back from the door to make room for him to pass into the house. He brushed his feet extra hard against the mat, not knowing what her house might be like, and he stepped inside.

It wasn't a walk in the park, but he'd take it.


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: Here's another chapter. We'll be drawing this one to a close soon.**

 **I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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Daryl walked around Carol's living room while she made popcorn in the kitchen. She'd told him to make himself comfortable, but he hadn't sat yet. Her house was very _comfortable_. She was making popcorn, and Daryl could smell it, but the house also had another smell to it. Daryl wasn't certain if it was flowers or some kind of food, but it was a nice smell. It was warm and welcoming. In the living room there was a small fireplace—one that was evidently commonly used—and the mantle was lined with pictures. Daryl looked through them and tried to place the people there from stories that he'd heard. He could assume that the older women were her friends, all of them laughing and showing most every tooth they had between them in the photos. The child, though, that wasn't a child in all the pictures must be Sophia.

"This your daughter?" Daryl called.

"I'm sorry?" Carol called back.

"Your daughter? With the red hair?" Daryl asked. "This is Sophia?"

"Oh—you mean the _pictures_ ," Carol said, coming into the room with a large bowl that was overflowing with popcorn. Carol was right. She always made enough food for far more people than were present to eat it. "That's Sophia," she said. She smiled warmly just looking at the pictures herself.

"Pretty," Daryl said. "I can see the resemblance. She's got your eyes. Smile."

"She got my hair color," Carol said. "What used to be my hair color. Mmmm...maybe my smile. She got her father's nose and—she got her grandmother's eyes. My mother had brown eyes."

"But you didn't?" Daryl asked. "I mean—I can see your eyes are blue, but..."

Carol smiled and shrugged.

"My dad had blue eyes. So did I. My ex-husband? He had blue eyes. He always said that Sophia's brown eyes were proof that she wasn't his. That I must've had some kind of affair with the mailman or something," Carol said.

"Did you?" Daryl asked with a smirk. Carol hummed at him and put the popcorn bowl down on the coffee table. She sat down on the couch and patted the cushion next to her so that Daryl finally walked over and joined her.

"I didn't," Carol said. "But—maybe I should have." She laughed to herself. "You know—what is it? Double Jeopardy or whatever? You serve the time for it so you can't be convicted again? I should've had an affair with everyone I was accused of cheating with. Truth is, I never cheated with any of them."

Daryl hummed and reached for the popcorn.

"You don't seem the type," he said. "Still, you never know."

"Were you ever married?" Carol asked. Daryl hummed in the negative and shook his head. He swallowed through the popcorn that he was crunching. Carol got to her feet and he followed her with his eyes. "Forgot drinks," she said. "I bring you something to choke on and nothing to wash it down with. I'm having wine—what do you want?"

"Wine with popcorn?" Daryl asked. He cringed at the thought. Carol just laughed at him and shrugged. "What you got?"

"Alcoholic or non?" Carol asked.

"Depends," Daryl said. "We having a party or eating popcorn until you fall asleep in about thirty minutes? It's almost three."

"And I'm not sleepy," Carol said. "Unless you are..."

"Beer?" Daryl asked.

Carol shook her head, her lips pursed tight together.

"Surprise me," Daryl said. That was all she needed before she disappeared to the kitchen again and Daryl sat there and listened to the sounds of her knocking around in the other room. She returned, a few minutes later, with a wine glass in one hand and a tall glass in the other. She put the glass in front of Daryl—some unidentified liquid in it—and Daryl picked it up to smell it.

"Whiskey?" He asked.

"That OK?" Carol asked.

Daryl smelled it again.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah—I mean smells fine, but it's a lot. Normally you don't pour whisky like you're pouring someone a glass of tea."

Carol laughed to herself and Daryl saw her face blush pink. He hadn't meant to embarrass her.

"I don't drink it," Carol said. "At least, not very often. I prefer wine. Sometimes, though, one of my friends will want something a little stronger. I've got a fully stocked liquor cabinet and most of it just sits there."

"Aging," Daryl said. "This is fine."

He picked it up and sipped from the glass of whisky, trying to cover over anything he'd said or done that might have embarrassed her. If she was bothered, though, she got over it quickly.

"So," Carol asked, drawing the word out. "Were you ever married, Daryl?"

"No," Daryl said. "Never."

"I find that hard to believe," Carol said.

Daryl chuckled to himself.

"Why? 'Cause I'm such a catch?" He asked. She made a face that he wasn't expecting—a face that made his cheeks burn. He cleared his throat to try to take control of the sensation that washed over him. "Never married. Really—don't think I ever come close to it. Maybe..." He stopped a minute. He bought himself time by eating the popcorn. He offered, around his half-full mouth, some praise for the popcorn that he was consuming by the handful. Carol, for her part, was just sitting there watching him. She ate her popcorn kernels one by one. She bit tiny pieces off of them—all the little wild parts that hung off to the side first—before she put the ball leftover at the end in her mouth. "Maybe I thought about it. This one time. This one woman. Thought about—ya know, what it might be like...but I ain't never been married."

The way that Carol was watching him made Daryl struggle a little more to breathe than he normally did. He realized, too, that just her expression was stirring up some feelings in him that he hadn't really entertained all that much in the past couple of years. To distract himself he could eat the popcorn, but he was a little afraid that he'd wolf through the whole bowl in a matter of minutes while she was still just sitting there—nibbling bits and staring at him.

He cleared his throat against the odd choking sensation. He tried to wash the popcorn down with his drink and winced when it hit his throat and he remembered that, though it was served like tea or soda, it was straight whiskey. He coughed a little at the burn and rushed to cover his mouth to avoid spraying Carol with popcorn kernels.

She reached and patted him on the back like she was helping a choking child. She leaned into him.

"Are you OK? Oh God—don't choke! I learned the Heimlich maneuver but I've never actually done it!" Carol declared.

Daryl laughed then, which only made him cough a little more, and Carol laughed too as soon as she realized that he'd survive the incident—even if it wasn't with his pride or dignity entirely intact.

"I'm fine," Daryl said as soon as he was certain that it wasn't a lie.

"Don't get so excited," Carol said. "You don't have to eat it all at once. I'm not going to take it away from you."

Daryl chuckled.

"Asshole," he said, leaning to bump her. She seemed as pleased then as she usually did when he called her that. It was odd, because it usually wasn't considered a term of endearment, but she seemed to take it that way.

"I guess you don't want to tell me about the woman you were maybe thinking about marrying?" Carol asked.

"Rather not," Daryl said. "You were just married the one time?"

Carol hummed.

"Once was enough for me," Carol said. "I didn't exactly pick well with my husband. He—wasn't as crazy about me as he said he was. Turns out? He was just crazy." Her face fell slightly. "He was—he was abusive." Daryl's stomach turned at the thought and he tried to offer her some words—words he knew, personally, wouldn't do anything but he still felt he had to offer them—but she stopped him before he could get them out. "No," she said. "It's fine. I'm fine and Sophia's fine. It took me a long time—too long—but I left him. He's been out of my life for a while now."

Daryl hummed.

"But assholes like that? They never get outta your head," he offered. She raised an eyebrow at him in question. "My old man," Daryl said. "He was a first class son of a bitch. To my mom. To my brother. To me."

"I'm sorry," Carol said, her words coming out as barely more than air. Daryl shook his head at her.

"He was hell-bent on destroying himself," Daryl said. "I know that now. He just didn't care who he had to take with him when he went."

"Is that—what happened to your mom?" Carol asked.

Daryl swallowed. Even after all those years, thinking about his mom could still make his gut knot up. He shrugged.

"Maybe," he said. "Not—not directly. But someone gets into your head like that? Who's to say what they do and don't cause?" He tasted the whisky, this time fully aware of what it was. "It's OK, though. It was a long time ago."

"If it's—I don't even know if it's OK to say, but—it doesn't seem like you took after him," Carol said. "So—that's good, right?"

Daryl was slightly amused at the comment and he nodded.

"Yeah," he said. "I guess—in some ways, I did. Especially when I was younger. Merle, though? He took after him more. That...just that self-destructive tendency. One of the reasons that Merle getting that job was such a big deal. He hit rock bottom. Went to a clinic. Checked himself in. Got clean. Stayed clean—the job? It was like a reward, telling him it was all worth it."

Carol licked her lips and tasted her wine. Her eyes were darting around and Daryl could tell that she was uncomfortable. Of course she was uncomfortable. He had that effect on people sometimes. He cleared his throat.

"I'm really sorry," he offered. "You don't need to know all that. You didn't ask it. It ain't your problem. Really? It ain't even my problem no more. But—hey—you don't gotta _worry_ about me or nothing. I'm not gonna like go crazy and start...ya know."

Carol nodded her head.

"I know," she said. "And—I wasn't worried. At least. Not...not about that."

Daryl was a little struck by the comment, but he was also a little eager to change the conversation to something that would bring the smile back to her face that he'd so successfully wiped off of it. He tasted the whisky again and picked at a piece of popcorn.

"D'you wanna tell me about your friend?" Daryl asked. Carol stared at him like she had no idea what he was talking about, but she worked it out for herself and realization came over her face. Then she rolled her eyes.

" _Michonne_ ," Carol said. "It was nothing. Well—I mean it was _something_ or she wouldn't have come over. But it was a misunderstanding. A stupid one, too. She came over and talked it out with me for about—an hour, maybe? Just the whole—my marriage might be over kind of thing. But then, he called. And she talked to him. She yelled at him for a while. I just sort of sat here because—if I'd tried to leave? She'd have made a show about that. I wasn't supporting her or she was inconveniencing me or whatever. So I just sat here. She yelled at him for a while and then? She hangs up the phone and she hugs me and it's all fine and it's great and...I don't even know. They worked it out and she was going home and they were going to work on it there."

Daryl hummed.

"Sounds pretty rough," he said.

"She was pretty distraught," Carol said. "At least when she got here."

"I meant for you," Daryl said.

Carol laughed.

Just like that, the smile was back. The dark confessions that sometimes happened at the witching hour of three a.m. were temporarily forgotten and the smile was back. The pink that had been there before came to her cheeks again, but not with the same strength of color as before.

"That's what friends do," Carol said.

"And you're a good friend," Daryl said. "Most other people would've told her to go home, work that shit out there, and call me if you can't fix it."

And, just like that, she was staring at him again. She drank from her wine glass, but she didn't take her eyes off him. She tipped her head to the side, even, like she was studying him, and Daryl felt the same nervous flutter from before. Being stared at made him uncomfortable in general. But her expression? And coming from Carol? It was an entirely different kind of discomfort than usual.

He cleared his throat and laughed nervously to himself.

"You keep looking at me like that," he said, deciding to break the tension for a moment, "and I'm gonna start thinking you're gonna—kiss me or something."

Carol licked her lips and sucked her bottom lip in.

"What if that's what I was thinking?" She asked.

Daryl swallowed.

"Well..." he said, but he realized that he didn't have anything to come back with. He put his glass on the table and reached to take Carol's glass. She released it without question and he put it on the table next to his. He turned his body toward her a little, but his concentration over the soon-to-be-kiss was broken when she laughed quietly.

"This is gonna be _some kiss_ ," she growled, "if we can't even hold onto our drinks."

Daryl snorted.

"It was gonna be," he said. "I was gonna—knock your socks off. But I think you just ruined it."

She hummed in response.

"Maybe we can work around it," Carol said.

And, as a show of her devotion to at least attempting to work around it, she leaned in and kissed Daryl. At first it was tame—as tame as any kiss that any Junior High kids had ever exchanged—but then she backed away enough to nip at his lip. She nipped him again, tugged gently at his lip, and Daryl felt his whole body respond to the kiss. It was him, then, that caught her face in his hands and went after her, requesting more—a hunger he didn't even know he had coming out.

And Carol responded. Apparently, too, she was no stranger to those hunger pangs.


	6. Chapter 6

**AN: Here we are, another chapter here. One more to go in this short one.**

 **I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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The skin on Carol's neck was soft and it smelled sweet. To the taste, it was floral with a hint of bitterness—no doubt the effects of some lingering lotion or cream—but Daryl didn't find it unpleasant in the slightest. Given permission to indulge as much as he cared, Daryl did just that. Carol teased him, twisted her head this way and that, pulled away from him just to return and beg for another kiss with hungry lips. Daryl didn't keep track of the time they spent on the couch, grabbing and groping like teenagers, but he knew that it was a while because his lips stung from their efforts and he was breathing heavier than he maybe wanted to admit.

Finally, Carol pushed him back—off of her—hard enough that he backed up the rest of the way to try to read what might be wrong with her. She dabbed her fingertips against her lips, probably feeling the same sting that he was, and she glanced around her own living room like she was unfamiliar with the space.

"Go to bed," was all Carol got out as any kind of explanation. She was struggling to move from her position, at the moment, and Daryl made space for her to be able to sit back up from where he'd somehow worked her pretty far down into the corner of her own sofa. He offered her a hand as the only form of apology he could manage for the unintended _stuffing_ of her body into her couch cushions. If she was bothered, she made no real indication to make it clear.

"You want me to go?" Daryl asked.

"If by go, you mean to the bed? Yes," Carol said. "I'm too old to do this here when I know I have a perfectly comfortable bed just down the hallway."

Daryl cleared his throat. He'd been pretty sure which way this was headed, but he still didn't like to assume things. After all, Carol could change her mind at any minute and say that she'd only had a heavy make-out session in mind—and that's all it would end up being.

"So you're—sure you wanna do this?" Daryl asked.

Carol laughed and her cheeks flooded red. She nodded at him, though, before she wrestled herself off the couch and then offered him a hand. When he didn't take it immediately, she wiggled her fingers at him and then held her hand out to him again.

"I'm sure," she said. "Daryl—I've been sure for a while. At least since the third night we walked together."

"How could you be sure all that time?" Daryl asked. "And not say nothing to me?"

He took her hand, though he really didn't need it to get up from the couch, and he followed her as she tugged him along.

"What would have had me to say, Daryl?" She asked, leading him down the hallway almost like a child. "I've thought about it and I'm hoping that sometime—preferably in the not so distant future—that you'll decide you'd like to have sex with me?"

Daryl laughed to himself at the combination of her words and their delivery.

"Well, _yeah_ ," he responded. "Hell—takes the guess work right outta things. I think you'd be surprised—I respond to that kinda thing. Don't have to worry if I'm making a mistake or reading things wrong. Just cut and dry. Lay it all out on the table."

Carol stopped walking and turned around to face Daryl. She rubbed his hand in hers. She met him and kissed him again.

"What were you _reading_?" She asked, cocking an eyebrow at him when she pulled away.

He chewed his lip, amused at her expression.

"First, I was just reading that we were friends—walking in the park," Daryl said. "That—you couldn't sleep. And I couldn't sleep. So we were keeping each other company." Carol nodded her head at him and hummed her agreement. "Then? I wondered if—there could be something else there. Or if it was just me maybe—maybe _wanting_ something else. But maybe you weren't really feeling that way."

"And what are you reading now?" Carol asked, smirking a little.

"That that right there is probably the door to your bedroom," Daryl said. Carol nodded and sucked her teeth.

"It is," she agreed.

"And that we're probably going in there," Daryl said. Carol nodded again.

"We are," she said. "Unless you don't want to."

Daryl bit back his smile in favor of the feigned seriousness of the moment and reached around her. He caught the knob, turned it, and pushed the door so that it swung open.

"After you," he challenged.

Carol nodded her head as an acceptance of the challenge and she pulled him into the bedroom. She led him to the bed and she turned on a bedside lamp to give them more light to work with than just the glow from an electric alarm clock. The bedroom was much like the rest of the house—warm and inviting. It was comfortable and not lavishly decorated. Maybe, in some ways, Carol's "space" reminded Daryl of her Carol herself. She was comfortable. There wasn't anything false or put on there.

Daryl licked his lips.

"I'll be straight," he said. "Since that seems to be the topic of this whole evening. It's been a while."

Carol hummed.

"Four years? Five, for me?" Carol offered.

"At least that long for me," Daryl said, raising his eyebrows at her.

"Then we're in good company," Carol said. "I hear it's like riding a bicycle, though. You don't forget."

"Haven't done that in a while either," Daryl said. "And last time I did? Fell off and busted up my damn knee."

Carol laughed and brought her body against him. She wrapped her arms around him and he felt her fingertips dig into the muscles of his back. Just the determined touch was enough to remind him that—though it had been a while—certain parts of his body were more than eager to give it another go.

"We'll just make extra sure you don't fall off," Carol teased, nuzzling his neck before she kissed the skin there lightly and sucked it gently, sending a shiver running through Daryl that he was sure he passed to her. He pushed her back, against her bed, and she pushed back. She held a hand up to him, a silent request that he wait, and he did. She peeled back the blankets on the bed and rearranged the pillows, creating a veritable throne, and then she gestured. "After you," she teased, hearkening back to his earlier challenge. Daryl accepted and got onto the bed, and she followed after him, practically collapsing on top of him. He found the bottom of her nightgown and worked it up, his fingertips rubbing against the soft skin of her sides. She shivered and he felt it. She laughed quietly at herself. "That tickles," she breathed at him before she changed her position enough to help him work her out of the garment.

She hadn't bothered to put on much clothing before she'd answered the door. The simple cotton gown and a pair of equally simple cotton underwear was all that she was wearing. Daryl sucked in his lip the moment that she was revealed to him in the lamplight.

"That good or that bad?" She teased, her brow furrowing slightly. It was meant to be a joke, but it was a joke with a shred of truth—of real concern—behind it.

"Perfect," Daryl said as quickly as he could, hoping to erase the concern. Her face didn't change immediately, like she was taking her time to believe him, but she did somewhat nod at him.

"It's not fair," she said. "You're wearing so much—it's a lot more work for me."

Daryl snorted. It was true. He'd lost his shoes in the living room but everything else—right down to the loose change in his pockets and his car keys—was still on his person. This time he held a hand up to her as a request to wait and he left the bed long enough to simply shuck his clothes without pomp or circumstance. He wasn't much for putting on shows and, at this point, he didn't think it mattered all that much anyway. The end result was going to be the same.

"Try not to wallow too damn much in your disappointment," Daryl teased, returning to the bed. Carol didn't offer him the same words of _encouragement_ that he'd offered her. Instead she pushed him back into the pillow nest that she'd built and she offered her encouragement with her hands, gliding them lightly over his body as she followed them and peppered his skin with kisses and short, damp laps from her tongue. He closed his eyes to it, not sure that he could recall any woman he'd been with before giving him such thorough attention—usually it was him that simply seemed _expected_ to lead things. When Carol came back to nip at his lips, prompting him to open his eyes, she smiled at him before she removed her own cotton underwear. Then she took his hand in hers and placed it between her legs, coaxing him to pay attention to her—and he did. He rubbed his fingers over her nub and teased her with his fingertips. Just as he'd done, she closed her eyes to the sensations, but she moved her body—still hovering somewhat awkwardly over him—in response. "Guess you're not too disappointed," Daryl breathed out, feeling the sticky dampness on his fingers that told him she was at least interested by what was happening here.

She opened her eyes to him and turned her head, studying him a moment before she stroked him and he hissed at the feeling of her skin on his.

"Guess you're not either," she said, her voice rising at the end with the humor she couldn't quite contain.

"The only thing I got on me," Daryl said, feeling he might as well be honest, "is a condom that I'm pretty sure has been in my wallet for—oh—I'd say seven or eight years. I'm pretty sure _air_ could get through that thing."

Carol bit her lip and turned her face, hiding her amusement for a second before she looked at him again.

"I don't have anything either," she said. "And—that could be a pretty big problem...except I went through menopause at least three years ago."

"Thank God for the little things?" Daryl responded.

Carol nodded.

"I'm clean," Daryl said.

"Didn't doubt it," Carol said bluntly. "But—I am too, for the record."

And, as demonstration that maybe she thought that was enough for them both—all bases covered—Carol changed from awkwardly hanging over him to straddling him, her real purpose for the earlier position revealed. Daryl arranged himself enough to find her breasts with his mouth and she gasped at him when he sucked at her nipple. He moved to the other, his hand teasing the damp one for a moment, and she paid him back for his teasing by dipping her body to rub herself against him. The movement sent a jolt through him and he stopped what he was doing. He shook his head at her.

"You do that too much? Show is gonna be over before it's gotten started," he warned.

Carol snorted at him.

"How long is intermission?" She asked. "Just for—reference?"

Daryl shook his head.

"Not sure," he said. "But I can promise you that you'll finish that popcorn."

"Point taken," Carol responded, leaning into him. She bumped her nose against his, playfully, and then she kissed him again. While she kissed him, she slid herself down onto him until he was fully seated inside her. Instinctively, he put his hands around her hips, holding her there loosely. He caught her gasp with the kiss and pulled away just enough to ask her if she was all right before she answered him by rocking her hips.

And then, instantly, in a relationship that had been built on conversation, there was nothing left to say. Not for either of them.

Maybe it wasn't exactly like riding a bicycle, but it was something that neither of them had forgotten. For just a moment they struggled against each other—neither quite certain how they fit together or how their movements might line up—but once they found their rhythm, they held to it. Daryl was almost certain that he was going to leave Carol hanging, knowing from the start that he simply wasn't prepared for this to last as long as he was going to want it to last, but she seemed to catch up to him quickly. Maybe she hadn't lied at all when she'd said she'd been thinking about it for some time now. Her short-shorn nails dug into his shoulders at the same time she clenched around him and Daryl pressed his fingers into her skin in response to the unexpected feeling of tightness coming in waves around him. It was enough to make him lose any resolve he had to hold on any longer and he let go. He was still sucking in air—regretting his almost life-long smoking habit—when Carol rolled next to him and peppered his jaw with soft kisses while she cupped his face. He ran a hand through his hair, scratching at his scalp, before he finally turned toward her and allowed his lips to accept one of the kisses that she was offering.

" _We're rusty_ ," Carol teased, her voice sounding throatier than it had before.

Daryl hummed.

"Wobbly starting off," Daryl responded, a little ashamed that he wasn't entirely in control of his breathing yet. "But I ain't complaining."

"No," Carol said. "Mmm mmm... _but_..."

"There's a _but_?" Daryl asked with a snort.

" _But_...I think we could do better," Carol said. "With a little practice? There's some— _real potential_."

Daryl shifted his body, making himself more comfortable. He ran his fingertips gently over Carol's skin and felt the small bumps rise up on it after the trailing touch. She inched her body closer to his, and her foot rubbed against his calf.

"I got a little time," Daryl said. "So—if you had some ideas? I mean—I'd be willing to listen. If you got time, of course. And you ain't busy."

Carol looked at him through sleepy eyes, her eyelids visibly heavy. She rubbed her fingers against his face in exchange for the touches he left on her body.

"I've got plenty of time," she said. "And plenty of ideas."


	7. Chapter 7

**AN: Here we go, the last little chapter here. I hope you enjoyed this short little story. Thanks to the anon that wanted to see Daryl and Carol as insomnia buddies that kept bumping into one another. I hope I did that some justice!**

 **I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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Daryl's muscles felt stiff and a little sore when he moved—he'd been in the same position for too long. It was a blessing and a curse rolled into one to feel that way before he'd even opened his eyes. It meant that he'd slept. It meant that he'd slept well and he'd slept long and hard—he hadn't even felt the need to move to make himself more comfortable and he'd been out of bed only once or twice to go to the bathroom—but it also meant that he'd be stiff from the lack of movement.

He lifted his back to stretch the muscles and immediately cringed at the feeling of his dead arm. It was asleep. It was so asleep that though his mind knew it was there, there was no other indication that he hadn't lost the limb entirely.

He rolled slightly, eyes still closed to block out the morning, and reached to use the non-dead arm to move around the one that no longer functioned so that it could receive blood again. His hand bumped something and he felt it out blindly for a moment before he opened his eyes.

Carol was asleep next to him. Her hair, which sometimes stuck up in odd directions, was sticking up even more erratically than usual. Her eyes were still closed and her breathing seemed even, despite the fact Daryl was pretty sure he'd probably knocked her in the head with his clumsy movements.

And she was, most definitely, the culprit behind his now-dead arm. He looked at it, under her body, a little mournfully. He wanted it back. He wanted to return blood flow to the limb. But, equally, he didn't want to disturb her—not when she was sleeping as soundly as she seemed to be sleeping.

He might have stayed there, just like that, suffering to keep her sleeping peacefully, if he hadn't amused himself and accidentally given over to laughing. The sound, escaping before he could control it, made Carol jump and she looked around a little confused before she lifted herself up some. Daryl took advantage of the movement to use his working arm to grab the non-functioning one and change its position.

Carol blinked at him, her brow furrowed, and he almost laughed again because she looked a little angry about the morning's arrival—or, more than likely, the afternoon's arrival.

But then she smiled at him. The concern on her features slowly melted away and she looked as pleasant as she normally did.

"Hey," she croaked out, readjusting her body to more easily face him. "Fancy meeting you here. In my bed."

Daryl laughed to himself.

"Yeah," he said. "Couldn't go nowhere. You trapped me in."

Carol made a noise that came out caught somewhere between a hum and a groan.

"All part of my master plan," she teased. "Did you have a nice nap?"

Despite the stinging in his arm—the first indications that it would eventually make a full recovery—Daryl rolled enough to be able to see the illuminated numbers from the clock that he knew sat on the bedside table. He stared at the numbers and then he rolled back to Carol, laughing low in his throat. She raised her eyebrows at him in question.

"Hell of a nap," he said. "It's twelve-fifteen."

Carol sat up quickly on her elbow. Apparently she wasn't as stiff as he was from the night.

"It is not!" She declared.

Daryl couldn't help but laugh.

"What the hell I get for lying about it?" Daryl asked. "Is too. Look for yourself if you don't believe me."

Carol crawled across his body, draping herself over him, to more clearly see the clock that he blocked from her view. She somewhat collapsed on top of him and hung there for a moment.

"It's lunch time," Carol said, some incredulity in her voice. "Is that right? That can't be right."

Daryl laughed.

"I didn't change it," Daryl said. "It's your clock. You the one would know if it's right or not."

Carol made the half-groaning noise but made no effort to move from her current position for the moment.

"When did we fall asleep?" She asked.

"No idea," Daryl said. "I went to the bathroom—which by the way? There ain't good damn light switch placement in there. Went in there—about six-thirty."

"The last time I looked at the clock, I think it was five something," Carol said. She moved then, changing her position, but just enough to angle herself so that her face was only inches from Daryl's. He tested his range of motion in the still stinging arm and brought it up to wrap around her. She took it as an invitation to kiss him—a quick peck on the lips—before she rolled back to the side he'd given her of the bed and wallowed around with her pillow for a moment. "We slept half the day."

"We were up the whole damn night," Daryl offered. "It balances out."

"Means there's no chance of sleeping tonight," Carol said. "Not even a little bit of a chance. I don't know about you but...if I don't get up early enough? It just makes the night a little harder to handle."

Daryl sucked in a breath.

It _could_ be true for him. He wasn't really sure. He slept in most Saturdays, and most Sundays too, but these were the days of his life when "sleeping in" meant that he might not see the world before nine or nine-thirty. He honestly hadn't been in bed at this hour for longer than he could recall. He had no idea how it might affect him, later in the day, when his body realized that it hadn't started to come into consciousness until it was normally done with lunch.

Of course, he also wasn't that worried about it. Not sleeping tonight at what the world considered a reasonable hour would be no different than not sleeping any other night at that so-called reasonable hour. And, truth be told, he enjoyed the sleep that he _did_ get last night more than he ever enjoyed simply rolling around in the self-pity that sometimes seeped in when he was trying to force himself to sleep when he simply couldn't.

"I can't say much about the night," Daryl said. "But—what if we were to start with the day first?"

"What?" Carol asked, not really bothering to move.

"The day," Daryl said. "Start with it."

"The day is half over," Carol said.

"For people that's going to sleep early, maybe so," Daryl agreed. "But you said you don't never go to sleep before three in the morning. You got a lot of hours left to go. And me? I'm around there too, somewhere. So—day's just starting."

Carol pushed herself back up again and found her elbows for support. Daryl looked at her—and he meant to look at her eyes, he really did—but he couldn't help but stare at her breasts as they hung in that position. She was more beautiful in the light of the afternoon than he remembered her being the night before. He'd always heard that dim lighting was supposed to be more flattering—hiding a multitude of sins and whatnot—but he preferred the way that she looked right now, even if her supposed _sins_ were showing.

She must have noticed, too, because she put her cool fingers under his chin and repositioned his face. She was smiling at him and he simply grinned at her in response.

"Don't put 'em out there if you don't want nobody looking," Daryl said.

"Didn't say I minded if you looked," Carol said. "But I'd like you to be able to finish a thought first. What'd you have in mind?"

"Might be changing my mind now," Daryl admitted. "But—food? I know a pretty great diner that serves breakfast all day long. Other stuff, if you don't want breakfast." He stopped and shrugged. "Day's wide open from there. At night I—uh—usually stop by the park. Get a little exercise, stretch my legs."

Carol's lips curled upwards, slightly, and she studied the mattress between her elbows for a second.

"What if..." she started, but she let it drop off again. Daryl changed his position slightly and reached to catch her under the chin the same way that she'd caught him.

"Finish what'cha thinking," he pressed.

Carol sucked in a breath. She let it out with a little hesitation.

"What if—we spent a little more time here?" She asked. "Just—right here? And then? We could—go and get some breakfast? Maybe we could figure out something nice for dinner? When we're not so hungry that we'll make horrible decisions? And then we could—pick up anything we need. Maybe come back here and watch some television or—what do you even _do_ during the day? When you're not working at the shop?"

Daryl laughed to himself.

"What do you do during the day?" He asked. "When you're not working at the office?"

She pursed her lips at him.

"I guess we've still got a lot to learn?" She asked.

"Fair amount," Daryl agreed. "But—we'll work around it. What do we do after we figure out what we do when the sun's up?"

Carol visibly swallowed.

"I'll make dinner," she said. "We could—go to the park? Go for a walk? Maybe even earlier than usual?"

"Could be crowded then," Daryl said. "Looks like it's a pretty nice day out."

Carol shrugged.

"And it wouldn't hurt to get some sun," she said. "Besides, then the night? It's just—wide open. Unless you had somewhere to be? Someone to meet?"

Daryl shook his head.

"No," he said. "I mean—I usually meet someone at night. But I got a pretty good feeling she'll know what happened to me if I don't show up to the park tonight. Besides, she's got my number now. She can call—if she gets too worried about it."

Carol smiled.

"Is it—too much? If I ask you to spend the day here? Maybe the evening too?" Carol asked.

Daryl swallowed. His stomach tightened at the thought of it. The first thing his mind wanted to do was run wild. It wanted to rush ahead—to ask what it _meant_. It wanted to think about logistics of things. What did this mean for the future?

But just as much as Carol worried that asking for another night was "too much," Daryl knew that thinking about the future was "too much" at the moment. Right now? That wasn't what either of them needed. Until now they'd been taking it night by night. One late night to the next. It had gotten them this far. It had made all of Daryl's nights, so far, a little bit better than they would have been. And it had made last night one of the best that he could recall.

For now? Taking it night by night was just the right speed—whatever each of those nights might hold.

Daryl shook his head at her.

"If you didn't, I would ask you," Daryl said. "But—I do need to go by my house. Check the mail and the machine. Pick up some clothes."

Carol nodded.

"You could do that while I buy the food for dinner," Carol offered. "If you want."

"Or," Daryl said, "we could do that after breakfast. Lunch. I can show you where I live. You can see—what it is that I go home to every night when we roll outta the park. And then? We both go and buy the food for dinner."

"You like to grocery shop?" Carol asked, perking up slightly.

Daryl laughed to himself. He didn't really care for it. His grocery shopping usually boiled down to piling his cart up with t.v. dinners and a few odds and ends. It looked like Carol, though, might actually enjoy such an outing.

"I got a feeling I might," Daryl said. "Long as we go in together."

Carol's cheeks blushed a little red and she got herself out of her position and got out of the bed on the opposite side of the bed instead of crawling over Daryl's body. She scuffed around and Daryl realized, when she started around the bed, she'd been working on sliding her feet into bedroom slippers to protect them from the cold floor.

"It's settled," Carol said. "Breakfast first."

"Thought you—uh—wanted to stay here a little bit?" Daryl responded.

Carol nodded her head. She raised her eyebrows at him and he saw a smirk playing at her lips.

"I do," she said. "I want to take a shower—before we go. Do you mind?"

Daryl gnawed at his lip, trying to read her—something he was still learning—and then he decided to take a chance on things. He sat up, making his first efforts to get out of the bed.

"Go ahead," he said. He hesitated. "I'll—meet you there."

Carol smiled and started into the bathroom, scuffing her feet as she went.

"I was counting on it," she called back to him.

"Me too," Daryl said to himself, turning himself to sit on the side of the bed.

One usually-quite-long night at a time had gotten them this far and, for now? It was good enough for Daryl.


End file.
